


Fair Winds and Following Seas

by riyku



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, M/M, Major Character Injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-05
Updated: 2017-07-05
Packaged: 2018-11-23 03:53:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11394813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riyku/pseuds/riyku
Summary: Keep your head down. Work hard. Never wear a hat in the wheelhouse or your luck will take a nosedive. This is the rookie advice that Jared gets in his first few days as a deckhand on board an Alaskan crabbing boat, in between catnaps and ice storms, twenty-foot seas and more near misses than he really wants to count. He also learns early mornings followed by late nights aren't enough to kill a person, but ten minutes in below freezing waters might be, and that the biggest favor he can do for himself is to try and stay on the captain's good side.Jensen rose quickly through the ranks to become one of the youngest captains the fleet has ever seen, but he has been around long enough to know that no one ever gets through a season without a few battle scars. It's Jared's quick wit, sarcastic mouth, and a particular sort of point-of-no-return look about him that makes Jensen hire Jared on a whim, reminds Jensen a little of himself fifteen years ago. There's nothing better than watching the morning break over the bow of the ship - Jensen just needs to keep Jared alive and well long enough for the kid to figure that out for himself.





	Fair Winds and Following Seas

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2017 spn_j2_bigbang. The _Deadliest Catch_ AU I've been threatening to write for years.
> 
> Many, many thanks to wendy for running this beast of a challenge year after year. A huge, HUGE thank you to my partner in crime this year, phoenix1966, who patiently put up with the flakiest author in all of SPN fandom, and who took my downright shoddy draft and made an absolutely fantastic graphics set out of it. I mean, the dividers _alone._ Honestly, ignore me and [go check out the ART.](http://phoenix1966.livejournal.com/26513.html)

 

He felt - washed clean, healed. He felt if he could just live here he would be all right. He felt as if he had never been alive before. He felt at ease with himself and as if he had come home to a place where he could be himself, without hiding anything, without pretending even to himself. He felt, thinking his way back up the beach, as if his brain had just woken up from some long sleep, and it wanted to run along beside the waves, to see how far and fast it could go.  
_— excerpt from Chapter 6, A Solitary Blue by Cynthia Voigt_

 

 

It's the last of his cash, a hundred dollar bill that he's kept tucked behind the driver's license. Emergency money. Jared settles his backpack further up his shoulder, everything he couldn't stand to leave behind testing the seams, and climbs the few steps down from the small plane, buffeted by the push of air from its twin propellers still slowing down.

There's a cold stab in the center of Jared's chest when he hands the money over to the pilot. The guy looks like someone Hemingway might have written about, a grizzled man with a shockingly white beard, skin the color of old, weather-worn leather and just as deeply wrinkled.

Maybe Jared's reaction isn't only on the inside, because he dips his hand into his pocket and hands Jared back twenty-five.

"But I thought--" Jared starts. He doesn't want a handout. If all of this has a point, that might be it. Or something close to it.

The pilot doesn't look him in the eye, keeps his gaze on the sky and jams his hands in his pockets as if this small act of charity is making them collaterally uncomfortable. "Been making a dozen runs a day for the past week. You're showing up at the end of it. You greenhorns have been keeping my tank full. I'm flush. More than."

"Greenhorns?" Jared shivers, wonders how long it might take his southern blood to thicken. It's cold here, colder than it had been in Juneau. It's not unbearable, though, not what Jared had figured it would be this far north. The sun is bright and cutting, hovering over the triangular tops of the pine trees to the east. The runway is damp but not icy and there's a charge in the air, sharp like ozone before a storm.

The pilot squints at him, deep creases at the corner of his eyes from a lifetime of doing exactly that. "Rookies," he explains. "Hell, son, you really are new." He pulls his hat off, slicks his thin hair back and puts the hat on again in one automatic, habitual move. "Anyway, it's hard to get lost around here. Keep walking downhill and you'll end up at the docks." He gives Jared an appraising glance, head to toe. "You're big, young, and by the looks of it strong enough. Someone down there is sure to take you on."

Jared licks his lips and tastes salt, pulls his gloves on and yanks his knit hat over his ears, starts the march toward town as the plane's twin props wind up again at his back. A couple of pick-up trucks and big SUV's pass him as he walks along the shoulder and he considers sticking out his thumb but doesn't. This might be the edge of no-man's land, but that doesn't mean there aren't any Ted Bundy-types way up here.

The pilot was right, there's nowhere to go but down and there's not a lot to see. A church that was probably designed by someone more inclined to build lighthouses, rounded and topped off with a bright red roof and a widow's watch. The movie theater actually looks more like a church than the church does. The town is isn't much, basically a tiny main drag with cobblestone sidewalks, weather worn buildings huddled together with fading, peeled paint and hand-rendered signs. Wood smoke competes with the smell of brackish water and everywhere there are yellow signs warning people that eagles are nesting, odd pictures of inky stick figures fending off dive-bombing birds like Jared just stepped smack dab into a Hitchcock flick. He's never much liked birds. Freaky, beady eyes. Not at all trustworthy.

It's straight out of a storybook. Quaint in an on-purpose sorta way. Someone's idea of the last great western frontier. Probably less than two thousand souls call this small strip of land home and from all appearances, most of them are at the docks.

The waterfront is an ant hive. At first glance, it's barely controlled chaos, and Jared spends thirty minutes pacing alongside hulking iron-sided fishing boats, his backpack tugging at his shoulders, listening to the clank of chains and rough shouts and dodging the folks who are in a rush to get from one place to another.

After a few false starts, Jared finds work for the day, loading up the huge metal arms that crane stuff from the dock onto the decks of the boats. It's mindless repetition, and everyone's too busy to make small talk or ask questions. Jared's muscles are sore and feel used, and the salt air scours his lungs, makes him feel clean from the inside out.

This far north, the sun sets by about four in the afternoon and most of the captains call the day as the sky bruises dark. Jared lines up with the other dock workers, shakes the captain's hand when the guy forks over a new, stiff bill, reminds him with a nod and a wink to not forget to pay his taxes. His voice is rough and sounds like a three pack a day habit, and as Jared walks away, he realizes that he doesn't remember the man's name, isn't sure whether or not he ever knew it in the first place.

Six straight hours of work has replaced the hundred dollar bill he paid to get here, plenty enough to get him a room for the night and some supper at the bar a short way back up the hill, a spot so stereotypical that it's almost laughable. A big converted log cabin with buoys strung along the front porch and a big fucking anchor half buried in front of the place. He knows what the inside is going to look like before he even opens the door. Low ceilings and rich wood paneling, fishnets and captain's wheels on the walls. He's not wrong.

Jared squeezes through the people gathered at the bar to a corner in the back, orders a basket of high energy fried stuff and a beer he expects to be denied, but doesn't from a waitress who looks like she's ready to throw in the towel on the day. Her face is the kind that loses years when she smiles. She could be forty or twenty-five. The badge pinned to her shirt says _Stella,_ and she brings him a fresh beer with his food although he didn't ask for it, then sits down across from him in the booth with a relieved sigh, leans sideways to rub at her ankles.

Jared toasts her, tips the bottle in her direction, pops one of everything in the basket into his mouth. It's all come out tasting the same anyway, like old grease and seafood and Stella pushes the ketchup across the table toward him before tightening her dark ponytail with a few quick tugs.

"You're new. Not from around here," she says with an accent that might be New Jersey or New York, Jared's never been able to tell them apart.

He chews, swallows before he talks. Just because he's hundreds of miles away from home doesn't mean he's gonna forget the manners his mama drilled into him. "You're not from around here either," Jared points out, then says, "Is it that obvious?"

"Not a lot of people are actually _from_ here, and yeah, it's kinda obvious." Stella makes an all-encompassing wave in his direction. "No visible scars. You still have all of your fingers, and they're even mostly straight. Teeth too, and you haven't made any friends so far, or you wouldn't be alone, talking to me." She leans across the table and inhales deeply through her nose. "Besides, you don't reek like fish guts. Yet."

"Fair enough." Jared says with a small chuckle. "What brought you all the way up here?"

Stella shakes her head, "That's a story for a night when we're not so busy. Let's just say that it was a good dose of shoddy decision-making and an awful tendency to judge a book by it's cover. I've always been a sucker for a pretty face."

"We've all been there," Jared tells her.

"Sounds like you have a story, too." A momentary wince tightens Stella's expression as she stands up, hands pressed to the small of her back while she stretches. She winks at him and takes his empty bottle, dodges people on her way toward the bar. When she comes back, she slides a slice of apple pie in front of him along with the check. The pie isn't on it and neither is the second beer.

"Hey," Jared says, "you wouldn't happen to know where I can rent a room for the night, would you?"

"I'll put in a word with Sam," she tells him and hikes her thumb over her shoulder to indicate the woman at the bar, half a dozen longnecks held between her fingers and a warm smile on her face as she talks to the people lined up in front of her. "Good thing for you, she also has a weakness for pretty faces."

Jared grins at her and doubles her tip.

 

The top of Sam's head doesn't make it to his shoulder, although her presence and the volume when she speaks is twice her size. Jared's never really understood what it means when someone talks about a person with an old soul, doesn't usually buy into that sorta thing, but he thinks he's starting to get the idea.

"The john's through there." Sam points toward a door at the top of the stairs. "Don't forget to put the goddamn seat back down and if you screw up your aim, clean up after yourself. The end of the hall, that's you. You'll probably have some company by time we close up, so don't go streaking down the hall. Open a window if you're gonna smoke." She tucks the money Jared hands her in her bra and stretches up to pat him on the cheek. "Sleep tight, sunshine."

"Thanks," Jared says, and can't remember if anyone's ever called him that before.

The room is small, and Jared needs to duck his head to avoid knocking it against the exposed rafters. There's a scratched up wooden chair in one corner beside a shelf with some dog-eared paperbacks and that's where Jared drops his stuff, rifles through it and realizes he must have left his hairbrush in the hotel room in Anchorage.

Noise from the bar below is a constant rumble with the occasional burst of loud laughter and Jared finds it more of a comfort than an irritation. He shuffles back down the hall and brushes his teeth, scrubs his face and drinks water from the bathroom tap then looks at his reflection in the mirror. His cheeks are windburned pink, his eyes are bloodshot and the bags under them might as well go all the way to his jaw.

"Yeah, I'd hire me," Jared says to his double in the mirror. His voice has taken on that raspy quality it gets when exhaustion has seeped deep into his bones. "In a fucking heartbeat."

The bed is this old brass thing, narrow and uneven with a quilt that was probably made by someone's grandmother. It lets out a death squawk as Jared sinks into it. He cracks open a book he'd found on the shelf, some dog-eared paperback, old enough that the glue in the spine has dried out and each page Jared flips comes loose. He's so tired that none of the words click, could be a mystery or Shakespeare for all he knows. He wakes up from a doze an hour later to find he's dropped it, scattered pages all over the floor.

Below, someone has revved up the jukebox and it sounds like every single person in the bar is singing along to _Paradise City_ , their off-tune voices drowning out the gospel harmonies in the song magnificently. And that's when the homesickness kicks in, sudden and sharp. There's a scooped out sensation in Jared's guts and a hollowness in his chest and he's starting to understand that sometimes homesickness isn't attached to a place. Sometimes it's not even attached to a series of places.

 

The morning brings a game of duck, duck, goose as workers line up at the docks and are grabbed by the captains for the day. Jared's right along with them, his bag stashed back at the bar and his belly full of fried eggs and bacon grease, paid for with the effort of having to help escort the last of the drunks to the front door.

Jared's pushing a flatbed loaded up with crates of bait. Things are amping up, the season starting tomorrow and he still doesn't have a line on a job on a boat. His plan was half-baked from the jump and it's looking like it's probably gonna stay that way.

"C'mon, man. It's not like you don't have it."

The words cut through the baseline rumble of people moving around the dock. Everyone around them is slowing down. That's usually not Jared's thing, but he gets caught in the traffic jam when folks start to rubberneck.

"It's just a couple of hundred bucks. You can float me until we get back, take it out of my cut. You know I'll make good on it." The guy is getting agitated, closing in on a second man who is talking quietly.

"Fuck, I know you're not the first national bank of Alaska or anything," he says, edging into a shout while the other guy shakes his head and starts to turn away. The loudmouth grabs his elbow and although Jared's still several feet away, the glare in the man's eyes is dangerous and the way he sets his jaw is stubborn.

A hand falls on Jared's shoulder and he startles.

"Looks like we have a bit of a confluence," the man beside him says. He's bundled up in a heavy coat and striped scarf although the day doesn't really call for it. He has on bright red mittens that make no sense if there's any work to be done, and one of those hats that have the ear flaps and is lined with fake, puffy wool. His eyes are the same dark blue color of the water and there's a distinct smell of fish about him. Before Jared can open his mouth, he goes on, "I'm Misha, and personally, I'm hoping for some bloodshed. Always a guaranteed way to get the heart pumping."

"I'm Jared, and I have no idea what you're talking about."

Misha waves a mitten in the direction of the two men arguing. "Twenty bucks says Jensen's about to break that poor fucker's nose."

"Which one's Jensen?" Jared asks.

"The pretty one," Misha points out.

"The guy who isn't the national bank of Alaska."

Misha shrugs. "Well, he sorta is. One of them, anyhow. But yeah, you got it."

Jensen's closed in on the guy. His hands are curled into loose fists and his feet are set at shoulder width, like this isn't the first time he's had to punch himself out of a shitty situation.

"I wouldn't take that bet even if I had twenty bucks to throw away," Jared tells him. "Friends of yours?"

"One of them, yeah. The other, not so much."

Another guy is pushing through the crowd, short and built like a bulldog, the kinda guy who's decided to develop a big attitude to make up for what he lacks in height. He puts himself between Jensen and the other dude, who's still ranting and getting louder by the second.

"Well, that ends that. Goddamnit. It's like Chris has a nose for trouble, " Misha mutters. As the guy stomps back to the dock Misha hollers toward him with a salute, "For what it's worth, I had my money on you."

"Fuck off, Misha," the guy says without even a glance in their direction. Misha's mild smile doesn't falter a fraction.

"It looks like we might be in need of a new deck hand." Misha looks Jared up and down. "And you look like you might be in need of a job."

"What?" Jared asks, disbelieving. His luck barely ever runs this way.

"Right place, right time." Misha claps him on the back. "Right person to put a good word in for you."

"Why?" Jared says.

"Who? You. When? Tonight. Where? Over at Sam's place. You know it?" Misha's starting to walk away, weaving back and forth a little, as if he's not too sure of the right way to walk on dry land.

"Yeah, I do," Jared hollers after him, and leans his weight into the cart, starts pushing it again now that the crowd has opened up. "But you forgot about how."

"Bring a bottle of Johnnie Walker if you can swing it. That's how." With a wave, he takes the old, uneven steps up from the docks two at a time.

 

 

"Christ, Misha." Jensen's sprawled in his chair at the head of the table, presiding over the other people seated around him like some sorta royalty. A pauper prince and his court of rag-tag beggars. "What have you gotten us into this time?"

"If memory serves, last time I decided to get you into something, you hired Chris. We all know how that turned out." A small smile is planted on Misha's face, stubborn as the rest of him, and it grows wider as Jensen gives him a hesitant nod.

"I can't actually argue with that," Jensen says, then chews on his bottom lip as he stares at Jared.

Jared stares back. Jensen is the type of guy who seems like he'd be more at home on a back porch somewhere in Texas in his Long Horns t-shirt, washed-thin flannel and soft-looking, faded blue jeans. He's out of place here, in a middle-of-nowhere place that's an hour and a half long plane ride away from somewhere. So much younger than all the other captains Jared's run across, maybe mid-thirties at most. He's got a face that belongs on the cover of magazines and movie posters, one that might give James Dean a run for his money, not one that belongs hidden under the shadow of a worn baseball cap and a couple days worth of stubble.

Jared shifts from foot to foot, a bottle in a brown paper bag tucked under his arm. The table is full, five sets of eyes looking him up and down. It's a real bug under a microscope affair. One of them, a guy with blonde hair tucked into a sloppy bun at the base of his neck leans over to whisper in Chris's ear and they both chuckle.

"What are you, twenty? Twenty-one?" Jensen says.

"Nineteen, sir," Jared answers, and that gets a rise out of a couple of guys sitting at the table, and a surprised grunt out of Jensen.

“Brother, have you ever even _seen_ a boat before?” Jensen asks, still peering at him.

Back when Jared was a kid, his family had a little rowboat that he and his friends would sometimes take out to the tiny lake an hour or so outside of their hometown. He's ridden ferries and there was one memorable school trip up to Boston, where most of the junior class had been trotted onto a ship and taken out whale-watching. It had been three hours of freezing his ass off, huddled on a metal bench near the bow of the ship with a bunch of other frozen sixteen year olds. Jared never did see a whale. Not even a goddamn flipper.

None of this is going to make the kinda impression Jared wants to make. It's not going to prove to Jensen that he learns fast, that he has a healthy dose of desperation sitting right next to a need to make good out here. To flip off everyone in his life who told him he'd never make it on his own. Instead of telling Jensen any of it, Jared places the bottle in front of him and says, "Can't never be too sure, but I think that there are a few of them parked down by the docks."

A few beats pass. Jensen blinks at him a couple of times and lets loose a short bark of laughter that he tries to muffle behind his fist.

"Alright." Jensen cuts his gaze sideways to Misha, elbows him in the ribs before turning his attention back to Jared. "At least you're big, strong by the look of you, even though you could use a little more meat on your bones. Doesn't take a lot of know-how to bait the pots and push them around on deck." He pinches the bridge of his nose in a world-weary way. "Besides, what harm could it really do anyway? The other guy was a freeloading grunt, so you're already one up on him." Jensen stands, sticks his hand out. "Welcome aboard the _Wayward Son_."

Jared's stuck in between mildly offended and dumbfounded, relieved like an entire continent has been lifted off of his chest. It's the first time he's ever been handed a job for giving his potential boss a load of shit. Hell, it's only the third time he's been handed a job at all, and the first two didn't actually count. His manners finally kick in and he steps forward to shake Jensen's hand, says, "Thanks. You won't regret it."

"We’ll take you on at a half share, two hundred bucks a day, so you’d better hope for a long season. And I don't wanna know how you managed to score this." Jensen slips the bottle from the bag, frowns at it then pours himself a shot. He toasts Jared, passes the bottle around the table then tosses Misha his keys and shoves at his shoulder to get him moving. "Buy the kid some rain gear," he says. "Pick him up a safety suit too. Nothing on the boat is gonna fit him. Then make him carry the groceries on board." Jensen leans over and looks at Jared's feet. "And get him some new goddamn boots for fucks sake."

Misha whistles, eyebrows raised as he takes Jared by the elbow and leads him toward the door. “Wow. He _likes_ you.”

“How do you figure?” The man barely said a dozen words directly to him and those dozen weren't particularly kind.

“I’ve worked with him for going on ten years now. Ten years, and this is the first time he’s ever bought anyone a rain coat, let alone new boots. Holy shit. I expect you’ll be picking out the stationery for the wedding invitations once we get back to port. Please keep in mind that I like devil's food when it's time to choose the cake.”

“Fuck off,” Jared says, and digs into Misha’s shoulder, then skips a step. He’s only known this guy for a few hours. He’s overstepped, he's sure of it, but Misha grins at him, full-blown, and it’s the first time that Jared’s been able to take a deep breath in what feels like a month.

As they close in on the door, Jared brushes past Stella. She touches the small of his back and pushes up on her toes to whisper in his ear. "Congratulations, and good luck with that one."

"What's that mean? Should I be worried?" Jared asks.

"Nah. You're in good hands. Jensen's one of the best, but that doesn't mean that he's _easy._ "

"Stella," a man interrupts them, arms held wide and a swagger to his step. He's missing half of his ring and pinky fingers on his left hand and has a scar that runs from the corner of his mouth to his ear. "Can I give you a ride home tonight after your shift?"

Jared pauses, has to resist the drive to block this guy from her with his body, maybe put a protective arm around her shoulders.

Stella snorts, proves that she can take care of herself. "What, Mickey? You gonna give me a piggyback ride? Maybe put me on the handlebars of your bike?" She turns back toward Jared, pats his cheek as she slides past him. "None of you crew boys have cars."

 

Everything on this small peninsula exists to support the industry. They drive by fisheries and processing plants, stop at a boxy, nondescript government building where Misha sweet talks a tired-looking man into sticking around for five more minutes to get Jared a fishing license, since everyone who steps foot on the boat is required to have one.

"Are we really gonna need this much food?" Jared's pushing a cart through the grocery store, stooping every once in awhile to try and stretch out his brand new boots, break them in. Misha puts three gallons of milk into the cart that he's pushing with one hand and four dozen eggs into the one he's dragging behind him with the other.

"If we're lucky, yeah. If things end up going the way we want them to, we could be out there for a month, so call anyone you need to call and tell them you might not be home for a while."

"Way ahead of you there," Jared tells him.

Misha hums. "This morning you didn't have a job. That's some kinda confidence. I like it."

"More like optimism," Jared shoots back.

Jared starts piling in the coffee and sugar, a bunch of those energy drinks that he always steers clear of because they make his eyes dilate and his heart pound like he's about to have a heart attack.

"You've known Jensen for a long time, huh?" he asks.

"Just about as long as I've known anyone. He was deck boss on the first boat I worked on. I was about as green as they make 'em. Literally and figuratively. Pretty sure I puked for a week straight." Misha nudges Jared with an elbow. "Almost as green as you."

"He's pretty young to have his own boat," Jared says. Most of the captains he's run across so far have had more grey in their beards than anything. This job has gotta make a person old before their time, but still.

"There's a lot of nepotism, a lot of fathers handing boats down to kids who barely know the difference between starboard and a hole in the wall. Then there are folks who are just in it for the money. Jensen's not like that. Sure, he's young, but he's worked the coast from here to Louisiana and back up again. He's paid his dues. More than. He's forgotten more than most people know about fishing these waters." Misha starts loading a whole cow's worth of red meat into Jared's arms. "I hope you're not vegetarian."

As they're heading toward check out, Misha grabs exactly one box of animal crackers.

"Only one?" Jared asks.

"It's a superstition. Jensen has a few of them." Misha starts ticking a list off on his fingers. "There's the cracker thing, the music thing, the order we sail out of the harbor, the thing about Fridays." Before Jared can press for more intel, Misha says, "Just remember to never wear a hat in the wheelhouse. If you forget everything else I tell you, remember that."

 

 

It's the last night on dry ground and the couple of bars in town are packed, people spilling out into the street in front of them, everyone out spending money they don’t yet have.

Jared couldn't make it past the door to Sam's place, much less up the back stairs to a room, paced the deck like some lost puppy until he got the go ahead from Jensen to stay on the boat for the night. He's alone, leaning on the rail up by the bow, watching as the white clouds of his breath get snatched up and carried off on the wind, waiting for his center of balance to adjust to the motion of the boat. Not stomach churning yet, but that will probably change once they make it out to open water. His eyes are drawn upward to the wheelhouse. To Jensen, chewing on his lips, then his nails, back to his lips again. His face is ghostly pale, lit by the glow of computer screens and radar monitors as he studies the charts and maps, maybe still working on his game plan for when they set sail at first light.

The line of ships creak against their moorings, quiet iron clanking sounds dotted with snatches of music from the bars when the wind changes direction. The moon is hidden behind a cover of clouds, this strange, icy glow from above, so different from how it looks back home. Closer, somehow.

There's a sensation like spiderwebs on the back of Jared's neck and he looks up again, finds Jensen staring, not bothering to look away. Jensen tips his chin up and Jared takes it as an invitation to climb the stairs to the captain's level. He's back to pacing between his charts by the time Jared ducks through the wheelhouse door, and spins around when Jared taps on the wall.

“What is that on your head?” Jensen spits out.

Jared freezes at the entrance and rips the knitted hat from his head, twists it between his hands. “Sorry skipper,” he says. “I shoulda paid attention. Misha told me you’re superstitious--”

“They’re not superstitions. They’re traditions. _Rituals._ And the rituals work.” The look on Jensen’s face is hectic, barely hidden under a thin veneer, as he paces around the wheelhouse, wearing a track down the center and muttering under his breath. The kicked back guy Jared met at the bar has been replaced with this sack of nerves. “Greenhorns.”

Jared hides a small chuckle behind his hand, ducks his head and is mildly irritated when his hat's not there to stop his hair from falling into his face. "Opening night jitters?"

That's enough to make Jensen stop mid-step, hands on his hips. "Opening night?" he says, and gives Jared a sarcastic smile. "Kinda highbrow, isn't it? I'd expect something more like opening day outta you. Some sorta sports metaphor."

"C'mon, now," Jared says with a grin, slow and easy. "I contain multitudes."

He grabs Jared’s hand and Jared is surprised by it, by the sudden intimacy of his touch, how Jensen bends his head in close. The messages that it sends up and down Jared’s spine, the warmth that skitters along his skin are loud and clear. His cheeks feel like they’re glowing, and he hopes that Jensen thinks it's just from the cold.

“The blisters you'll get before you grow some calluses are gonna be a bitch. How long has it been since you held a shovel, brother?" Jensen says, not expecting an answer. He turns Jared's palm toward the light from the monitors.

"You gonna read my fortune?" Jared teases, and another shock runs through him when Jensen traces the lines on his palm with a fingertip. Life line, love line, line of fate.

"You're steadfast. Faithful," Jensen says, a sarcastic little twist to his mouth. "Strong heart line, broken life line. Somewhat crooked fingers. You're quirky." He points out the mounds of Venus and Saturn, says he can't remember the rest and drops Jared's hand.

"Talk about unexpected," Jared says.

"Hey," Jensen parrots back at him, "I contain multitudes." Jensen rubs at the back of his neck, won't look at him directly as he goes on, "It’s something that I picked up from my mother. She used to read palms and coffee grounds around the kitchen table when I was a kid. Playing cards too. I used to hide under the table and make all the ladies who came to see my mother jump. Growing up that way, a kid tends to remember a few things here and there."

Some of the superstitions are starting to make sense. Jared hums, curiosity doubled, wonders if he's ever gonna figure Jensen out. He's a bit of a riddle, and Jared can't stop thinking about him, like the lyrics to a song he can't quite remember and can't quite forget.

"Anyway, c'mon," Jensen says, clearing his throat. "I'll take you on the nickel tour, introduce you proper to the lady here."

Jensen begins trotting him around the ship, walks backward to face Jared most of the time. It's not a stretch to think Jensen could pick his way around the boat blindfolded, drunk and sideways in forty foot seas and not miss a single step.

"Chris will give you the ins and outs of it all tomorrow," he tells Jared as he points out the crab pots lined up on deck, huge cages where the crab goes in and can’t get out and the place where Jared will be doing the majority of his work.

"Hope you like the smell of fish guts, because you’re gonna be covered in them for the next few weeks," Jensen warns him, then tells him where to walk and where not to. He shows him the winch and the area where the pots get tossed over, and the hatches that lead to the holding tanks for the catch, a series of several filled with icy water, all kept separate. The boat can hold a huge number of pounds.

"It’s a single screw boat," Jensen says, as they head below into the engine room, and there's a pretty obvious joke in that one, but Jared doesn't dare touch it. It's about thirty degrees warmer in here, claustrophobic and stuffy, full of wires and piping that head out in every direction. Puzzle pieces that barely fit. "Everything in here is redundant. Two sets of hydraulics. Two of everything, except for the main engine." Jensen pats the thing like it's an old friend he hasn't seen in a very long time. "Don't mess with anything, or Aldis will have both our hides."

Back up again, and he points out his own cabin, doesn't bother to open the door, then Chris’s room. Jared's seen bigger closets in his time. Jensen pushes open another door to another cabin. It's windowless and Jared’s head brushes the ceiling if he’s not careful, two bunks on either side of it and one in the center along the back wall, a sign above the door that says _The Hole_ and that’s where the rest of the crew sleeps.

Jensen warns him about smoking in the cabin. "Not that I care, but the worst thing that can happen to a ship is a fire, so be careful."

When Jared tells him he doesn't smoke, Jensen says, "Huh," and pulls a pack out of his coat pocket. He shakes one out, puts it into the corner of his mouth but doesn’t light it. “I betcha that’s not the only thing that’s about to change.”

The galley is next, and Jared doesn't need an introduction here, not after helping Misha load in half a grocery store. He finds a matchbook in one of the drawers, strikes a match and Jensen thanks him but shakes his head.

"I quit a few years ago, actually. Or, well, mostly. Just haven't quite gotten out of the habit of carrying them around yet. Only have a couple a year now, and only when I've earned them. But I always have them in my pocket, just in case."

Jared says, “Because everything’s redundant.”

“Yup,” Jensen agrees, taking the smoke out of his mouth and tucking it behind his ear, “every single thing.”

They go to the staging area, rain coats and safety suits, rubber boots lined up against the wall like soldiers. The walls here are marked with graffiti, signatures and sayings, quotes and lewd stick figures in indelible markers. Hundreds of names. People who have worked on the ship, left their marks. Some clearly predate Jensen, and others have a date scribbled beneath their name, and Jared realizes what that probably stands for with a cold stab. He won’t ask whether it happened on this ship or another, doesn’t want to know the body count.

“Should I?” Jared asks, leaves the question open.

“Not yet, greenhorn,” Jensen tells him, scanning the walls. “Maybe someday, but not yet.”

 

 

The rest of the crew shows up early the next day, blurry eyed and grumbling. At this time of year, the sun doesn’t rise until about ten in the morning, and it’s in this sorta strange half gloom that Jared formally meets the rest of the tiny crew. Best guess, Jared's about ten years younger than anyone else on the ship.

Chris is deck boss, in charge of handing out orders and insults in equal measure. Steve walks with a limp that no one’s allowed to talk about, and Aldis is a strict Baptist, doesn’t drink or smoke and feels the need to pray for god's holy benevolence every time they put a pot in the water or someone passes the mashed potatoes, and according to Jensen, he's the best damn mechanic north of the forty-fifth parallel, and the second best south of it. Misha’s oddly zen about everything today, a counterpoint to Jensen's jitters, goes about making breakfast in the galley, eggs and sausage and potatoes, and enough hot sauce to damn near sink this ship.

Steve shovels breakfast into his mouth between drags of his cigarette, talks about last season and some mistake that Aldis made that makes everyone crack up. There's a lot of poor taste going around the breakfast table, nothing but locker room bullshit and dick humor, and it doesn't stop when Jensen joins them. Jared's on the outside of all of their inside jokes, and it's obvious they've worked a lot of seasons together, each one of them slotting into well-worn grooves, aware of their places in the pecking order.

Jensen’s antsy, and the dark thumbprints under his eyes tell Jared that neither of them managed to sleep much last night. He's already barking out orders and full of nervous tics this morning, checking and double checking, asking the crew if they remembered to do this, that and the other, and the other guys take it all in stride with rote answers and quick replies. He crawls into the booth beside Jared and Jared feels his leg bouncing constantly as he plows food into his mouth, immune from the ribbing and jokes of the rest of the crew. No one tells any stories on him, no dirty laundry to air maybe, or perhaps they don't want to fuck with boss man.

The way everyone defers to him is a subtle thing. There aren't any yessirs, but everyone calls him skipper. Misha's the only one who calls him by his name. As soon as Jensen opens his mouth, everyone else shuts theirs.

 

 

"There is not a snowball's chance that he's gonna fit his overgrown ass into that suit," Aldis is holding the safety suit up to Jared's chest, looking him up and down with a doubtful expression. The thing is five-alarm orange, looks like a onesie on steroids.

"You'll have to get it on and zipped up in under sixty or your fishing season is over before it starts," Jensen says, an old school stopwatch in his hand. "If you hit the water without one, you have maybe five minutes. Ten tops, not barely enough time for me to get this boat turned around and pluck you out."

The thing is heavy, neoprene, the only barrier between Jared and immediately freezing to death if the boat sinks and they're stuck out there for a while. It's awkward as hell, trying to pull it on and up with his gloves and boots still on, and the first try is a minute five seconds before Jared finally gets the thick zipper up to his chin and the hood over his head, hands tucked inside of the clumsy mittens.

Jensen says, "Okay, okay, best two out of three, now that you know how to do it."

On the second take he gets it in fifty seconds. The third is fifty-two and everyone’s satisfied.

"Alright ladies and gents, it's about that time," Jensen says, and turns tail to head toward the deck.

There’s a prayer led by Aldis, everyone standing in a circle, hand in hand. The same is happening on every other boat Jared can see. Aldis is speaking quietly, asking for safety and forgiveness, for the good lord to watch over them, and Jared can’t concentrate on anything outside of the coarse rasp of Jensen’s palm against his, Jensen's proximity as he bows his head forward and closes his eyes. His lips are moving minutely and it might be a prayer of his own or a list of all the things he needs to do before they get underway. Anyone’s guess.

There is a group of people standing on the wharf waving them off, two or three deep in places, a river of gloved hands held up. Mothers of some of the younger crew members in the fleet, wives and fathers and children, women from the night before.

"We're number six to head out," Jensen informs them. "Would have been better if we were ninth, but it is what it is." With that, he takes the steps two at a time up to the wheelhouse.

"Ninth?" Jared says to Steve, who's tucking a flask back into his jacket pocket. Hair of the dog and all.

"Yeah. Three threes. Or three cubed." Steve says it like it makes perfect sense. "Jensen has a thing."

All around them, airhorns start blasting, so the men line up on deck and watch as the ships ahead of them negotiate the narrow pass out of port and into the wider mouth of the bay. It’s a slow, trudging thing, and Jared thinks he might be able to swim to out to sea faster than this. Safety suit or not.

In the relatively calm waters of the bay, shipwrecks have washed up on shore, great iron hulks that rest on their sides, like metal skeletons with their hulls exposed. Beyond that, the land rises up steeply to a spot Aldis tells him is called Bunker Hill. A pillar of marble stands at the peak, flowers that will freeze come nightfall piled at the base of it, a monument to the dead and gone.

Chris joins him at the rail, hood of his sweatshirt cinched tight so only part of his face is exposed. A cigarette is hanging from the corner of his mouth and he squints through the smoke. His knuckles are uneven and battered, scabby, and the first two fingernails on his right hand are blackly bruised.

“It’s a graveyard," he says quietly. "You should hold your breath.” Chris gives him the once over, says, "Follow me," and doesn't stick around long enough to make sure Jared's on his heels, heads to the aft and the maze of crab pots.

"This is your office," Chris says, and pushes a trash can full of bait across the deck. Even through the thick gloves Chris has given him, Jared can tell the stuff is slimy. "We're gonna need at least fifty of these baited and ready to go at any time, might as well get cracking."

 

 

The air in the cabin is stuffy, thick with water and the heater is blasting directly onto Jared's face. His feet hang over the edge of his bunk and twice now he's forgotten where he is and sat up too quickly, banged his forehead on the ceiling of the cabin so hard he's seen spots, nearly fallen the five feet down from his bunk to the cabin floor.

Jared’s ripped out of a strange half-sleep, hands on his arms and ankles, pulling hard, sees a bunch of grinning faces when he manages to crack his gritty eyes open. His sleeping bag is still tangled around his middle and he nearly trips over the sock that's come part way off of his foot when he tries to stand on his own. Up and down aren't holding a lot of meaning.

"The fuck?" Jared manages, tries to break free of the arms around his middle and the hands still around his ankles, then he's being mostly carried down the passageway and outside, hair in his eyes, cold air on his face a shock that wakes him right up. He's bound to a mast with a rope that still has a buoy attached to it, tries to stand on his tiptoes because holy shit, his socks are getting wet and his feet are beginning to redefine what it means to be cold.

"Open up," Misha says to him, hand on his chin to hold him still, trying to force something wet and foul into his mouth. "Don't make me hold your nose."

Steve pinches Jared's nose closed and he gives in. He has a big brother and this isn't much worse than any given Wednesday he grew up with back home, opens up and lets Misha shove the thing in his mouth. It's bait, still mostly frozen and basically tasteless, and he tries not to think too hard on a particularly wet crunch when he bites down on it. Anyway, his stomach is made out of iron, also courtesy of his big brother.

Jensen's still in the wheelhouse, and Jared's starting to think that the man never sleeps. Jared's spitting out bones, tongues at a couple stuck between his teeth.

"Alright boys." Jensen voice carries over the PA. "You had your fun. Now put the kid back to bed."

The crew releases him, loosens the rope, all laughter and playful shoves, and Jared can't get to a toothbrush fast enough.

"You did well," Aldis congratulates him, his smile bright in the dark night. "When they pulled that stunt on me, I threw up on Stevie's shoes."

"Twice," Steve points out. "Speaking of, you still owe me a pair."

 

 

After a few duds, they pick up on a lucky run, whatever hoodoo Jensen's got going is giving them big returns pot after pot. Things begin to blur together and Jared loses track of the days, has to ask Jensen one afternoon whether it's Sunday or Tuesday. Jensen squints at him, tells him it's Thursday and asks him if he's knocked his head against the winch. Again.

Everything turns into a pattern. Sleep two hours, wake up and shove food in his mouth and coffee down his throat, get covered in filth and sweat regardless of the cold, shove more food into his mouth, wash his hands and sleep for another two hours only to wake up and do it all over again.

Jared figures out how to sleep anywhere at any time, begins to live off of a series of catnaps. He passes out in the galley, head pillowed on his folded arms, or hunkered down around the boots and coats in the staging area, or leaned against the shower wall after a twenty-four hour haul.

He also learns that Chris can really sing when one night he launches into a song about Texas, about guitars that tune good and long-legged women in the sorta twang that can only be native, never learned. Steve starts to sing along in a smoky voice a register lower, and Aldis groans, makes a big show of clapping his hands over his ears.

Jensen’s on deck when it happens, takes one look at Chris and teases, “There will be no country music on my ship.” Then he disappears back into command central, and moments later, his own music is blasting out of the bullhorn. Loud, teeth rattling punk at first, death metal when the night wears on and exhaustion really begins to take hold.

"You're gonna scare away the crab with this shit," Jared hollers up, and Jensen's voice breaks through, tells him that he can't hear him over the sound of the fucking awesome music he's playing.

 

 

Things begin taking on a surreal bend as the sun breaks over the horizon. Everyone's more zombie than anything, working on autopilot to pull the last few pots out of the water. Jared might have fallen asleep walking across the deck, finds himself suddenly leaning against the rail with absolutely no recollection as to how he got there, watching as a few stray crabs skitter away from him. It gets even stranger when Jensen starts playing _Flight of the Valkyries_ , Wagner blaring over their heads. Jared waves his hand in front of his own face and it trails out. There's a tight knot in his stomach and he feels like he's been on some all-night acid trip and is now riding out the last jittery, detached freefall into morning.

“Hey, check it out.” Steve wraps his knuckles on Jared’s shoulder, his words hushed and slow. It’s frigid, and the rare sunlight breaking through the cloud cover isn't helping. Three layers underneath the foul weather gear, almost every stitch of clothing that Jared owns hanging from his body, and the thump of Steve’s hand on him doesn’t register. “I can see Russia from my house.”

Jared closes his eyes, and it seems like just a blink, but when he opens them Steve has wandered off and Jensen's by his side, the small of his back against the rail, his arms crossed over his chest. The sunlight is painting his skin a warm color, turning the tips of his eyelashes golden and his mouth the prettiest sorta pink and Jared shouldn't be noticing any of these things. He lets himself anyway, because too late at night has slid directly into too early in the morning, and his body as well as his thought processes have been injected with lead.

"How's it going over there?" Jensen's smile is small. A gradual thing that brings out his laugh lines and softens his face and makes Jared's knees nearly forget how to reliably do their quite simple job of keeping up him upright.

"Ask me after I drink a pot of coffee. Or two," Jared answers.

"Well then, get to it. Think you have one more run in you?"

Jared pushes himself off of the rail, ditching his gloves and unzipping his raincoat. He weaves a little on his first few steps, and it's got nothing to do with the roll of the boat. "Sure thing, skipper. I could do this all day."

"Hey, kid," Jensen calls after him.

"Yeah?" Jared spins around, eyebrows raised, vision doubling and for a second he sees two images of Jensen still propped up by the rail before everything snaps back to center.

"You're tougher than I thought," Jensen says.

Jared turns away, mutters "Yeah, me too," although it hardly makes any sense, then stumbles in the direction of the staging area with a warmed up feeling in his chest, trying to act like it's not the nicest thing anyone's said to him in a long, long time.

 

 

The pots are in for soak, and the crew is crowded into the galley. Misha's waving a plate of chicken fried steak under Jared's nose when Jensen comes bursting in, kicks at Jared's boot to get him to move over and slides in beside him. He's anxious, bouncing his leg a hundred miles an hour, talking so fast he's only completing every other sentence. Classic Red Bull overdose behavior.

"Got some news over the radio," Jensen says. "Nasty storm on its way, coming from the southwest. Pressure dropped twenty-four millibars over the last eighteen hours or so, and it's not done yet."

Misha whistles low from his spot behind the stove. "That's a fucking bomb."

"Winds?" Steve asks, leaning forward.

"About seventy-five knots sustained. Gusting higher. It's got some spin to it." Jensen wipes a tired hand across his face, knuckles at his three day old beard. Misha tries to offer him a plate and he waves it away.

"Cyclone? This far north?" Chris says.

"Yeah, and they say global warming is propaganda," Jared pipes up. "What are the waves looking like?"

"Twenty foot. Our girl here can handle that, but anything higher…" Jensen leans back, stretches his arm along the booth and squeezes Jared's upper arm from behind. Jared's not too sure what to think about that, if he's reading too much into nothing, but he's spent enough time around Jensen to know that he barely ever does something without a reason. Everything is intentional.

"The aft tank is almost at capacity," Chris says. "We'll be off balance if things really get rolling."

"And navigating the boat is goddamn sluggish right now," Jensen agrees. He takes a deep breath, shifts a fraction closer to Jared. "I'll lay it out for you. There's a chance it'll just skim us to the south, and things might get a little choppy."

"But there's a chance it'll also head this way," Aldis cuts in.

"We're...what, three hundred nautical miles north of everyone else?" Jared says, picturing one of the charts Jensen has marked up in the wheelhouse.

"You've been paying attention." Jensen smiles, gives Jared's arm another squeeze and lets his hand linger there. Jared fights the drive to lean into him. It's pathetic. Thrilling. "Had a feeling you'd turn out okay, kiddo," Jensen says, then turns his attention back to the rest of the crew. "It's been good so far, since no one's been on our tail, riding our lucky streak."

"But now it's bad because it means no one's around to haul us out of the frying pan if we get into trouble," Misha says.

"Bingo." Jensen snaps his fingers. "Two options, far as I can see it, and neither of them are good. We head further north, risk getting iced in, or we pull out and tear ass back to Dutch. Wait for it to blow over."

"I've never pulled out in my life," Steve says, matter-of-fact.

"Well, that makes you a right fine gentleman," Chris says. He goes on, "Your call, skip. We'll back you," and everyone mumbles their agreement.

Jensen nods, fingers drumming on the table as he thinks it through. "Alright. Eat up, boys. Get ready to yank some pots."

Misha tosses an energy drink to Jensen as he heads toward the door and sets the rest of the six-pack down in front of the crew, then throws another pot of coffee on the stove.

 

 

The ice is already coming down hefty as the ship crawls into the harbor, a thick white layer of it all over everything that makes the deck an absolute deathtrap. Chris drags out the tarps, tells Jared to cover as many of the pots as he can. It's like ice skating on a tightrope as Jared climbs up along the rail, boots losing purchase and his gloves freezing to the metal. He has to peel his fingers off of them over and over.

The last tarp gets caught in the wind and flies back in his face, so now he's blind and tangled and the rail under his feet is slicker than oil. His spine gives a wrenching twist, and he's one bad decision away from landing in the water. It gets worse when he bangs his head on the boom arm on the starboard side trying to right himself. White flashes blank out his vision, there's a sound like an actual bells in his ears and the headache is immediate, dizzying. There's no choice but to drop down to the deck, do a significantly less than graceful pirouette that would have landed him tooth-crackingly on his ass if Jensen hadn't been there to keep him upright.

"Fucking christ, Jared." Jensen's pale, nose and lips pink from the cold but corpse-colored everywhere else. He swipes his thumb along Jared's forehead right below his hairline and it comes back red. He wipes it off on his jeans, leaving a bloody, smudged thumbprint behind on his thigh, and Jared zeroes in on that, can't manage to look away. "You good?"

Jared's heart is crawling into this throat and his head is monumentally starting to pound, worse than a minute ago, and he's still not too sure if gravity is trying to pull a fast one on him, and all he can think about is how this is the first time Jensen's called him by his name. Before this it's been kid or greenhorn or brother. Sometimes buddy. He likes the sound of it, the way it rolls out of Jensen's mouth, slightly slurred.

"How many fingers am I holding up?" Steve calls across the deck, flipping them the bird with both hands.

"One of these days, you're gonna have to get some new material." Jensen turns back to Jared, quieter this time. "Hey, are you good?"

"Yeah. Yeah," Jared says, breathless and still staring at the red spot on Jensen's jeans. It'll take more than one wash to come out. It's a fucked up thing to be thinking about, all things considered. "I guess so."

"Shit. I thought you were going over." Now that the immediate scare is over, Jensen's face is flushing, covering up the ghost-pale from before with anger, pretty mouth shaping into a grimace. "Boneheaded move. Having to crack off a little bit of ice when this is over isn't worth all that." Jensen pulls a handkerchief from his back pocket, checks it for snot and presses it to the slowly trickling gash in Jared's forehead.

"Maybe it knocked some sense into me," Jared jokes, lame and awkward, replacing Jensen's hand with his own. The cut itself prickles a little, doesn't hurt too bad, but that might be because he's frozen. Thaw a bit and it'll be a different story. The headache, though.

"That's my job." Jensen's eyes slip closed and he sucks in a deep breath. Takes a cigarette out, taps it twice on the pack and puts it back in again. He's probably had that same pack for years by the looks of it, the thin thing is rumpled, collapsed and torn. They most likely taste like shit, and that's most likely the point.

"Listen," Jensen starts, talking low, once he's managed to put a choke chain around his temper. He leans in close to Jared, like he's sharing a secret. Turns out he is. "Chris is a degenerate gambler. He'd put money down on the sun rising in the west if the odds looked good enough. Misha owes so much in back taxes that he’ll never get out of debt, likes to keep his options open and always talks about taking the dinghy and going all ex-pat in Siberia if the Feds get any closer. Steve has that goddamn limp that you don’t want to know the story behind, and there’s a reason that Aldis thanks god and all his angels every single time you pass the ketchup."

Jared's still processing all of this, wondering where it's gonna lead as Jensen continues.

"There's family you're born with, and those people can't be helped," Jensen tells him, and Jared's thinking of what Stella said to him that first night he came here, about how everyone has a story. He wonders whether Jensen is ever gonna tell him his. "But there's family you choose, and I would gladly put this life of mine at risk to save the life of any one of them. Wouldn't think twice. There’s all kinds of loyalty, and they’ve all earned mine in spades. There are a hundred different ways to die on this ship, and sinking is the absolute least of them."

“Would you do it for me?” Jared asks, still muzzy headed, the quick-flash adrenaline overdose wearing through his system, leaving him feeling fragile and jagged. “If it came right down to it, would you lay your life on the line for me, too?”

Jensen’s response is immediate and the grip he has on Jared's shoulder is like a vice. “If all goes right, and if you _listen_ to me, we’ll never have to find out.”

 

 

The bay is full of boats already taking on their fair share of ice, looking like a frozen army of bony skeletons out of a fantasy novel. More of them are moored to the pilings and Jared's glad to see it, to know that they weren’t the only ones who decided that caution was the better part of valor.

Hatches all battened, any door that has a lock on it has been bolted and everything that has a chance of blowing away has been tied down. The crew takes over dry land, most of them climbing up past the docks. Jared hangs back, and Jensen doesn't say anything about it, seems content to have Jared stuck close to his elbow as he oversees the dock workers off-loading the catch, hawk-sharp as he eyes the scales, writes down numbers.

Dry land feels off kilter to Jared’s inner ballast when they climb the hill to civilization, his body trying to adjust to the unmoving solidity of it.

"Glad to see you boys finally decided to grow a brain and get the hell off of that boat." Stella flings herself into Jensen's arms as soon as they shoulder their way into Sam's place, spins and gives Jared the same treatment a moment later, clucks over the cut in Jared's forehead and tells him to keep his hair out of it, mutters something about seeing if they have a bag of frozen peas around here somewhere because the only thing they're good for is keeping swelling down.

Within minutes, Chris and Steve are chatting a couple of ladies up along the back wall, and Aldis is on the ancient pay phone talking to his girlfriend, a smile on his face that Jared can see from clear across the room. Jensen buys the first round and then denies Jared a second on the grounds of possible head trauma, and keeps one eye on the television above the bar the entire time, showing rainbow-colored radar images and weathermen getting battered by the wind a ways south of here.

The place is starting to empty out, and Jared escapes to the front porch. His head still feels like an eggshell, the loud music and baseline noise of the bar like a kettle drum in his ears. He wraps his arms around his middle and shifts his weight from foot to foot to keep the blood moving in them, tries to control the way his teeth are chattering. Jared's always been fascinated by storms, used to spend an hour watching the lightning creep closer and closer over the flat expanse back home. Thinks about how the hair on the back of his neck used to stand up, and misses that particular smell in the air that he supposes they don't get around here.

"Hey," Jensen says behind him, and steps into Jared's periphery. A longneck dangles loosely from his fingers, dregs left in the bottom of it. "It's getting worse by the minute out here."

Jared nods, says, "You made the right call." The waves are crashing onto shore, huge spray against the bulkheads, water threatening to surge over the top of them. The docks are creaking and moaning, ropes banging against metal with a high-pitched trilling sound and the ships are beginning to get tossed around like toys in a bathtub.

"Reckon so," Jensen says, although it's colored with regret. "I mean, it fucks with the enertia, but we'll make good on it." He drains the last of his beer, holds it up and the wind is whipping so strongly that it actually makes the mouth of the bottle whistle when he turns it a certain way. "Anyway, you're with me. I got a place not that far from here. It's not much, but..." Jensen trails off.

"What about the others?" Jared asks.

"Steve and Chris found warm beds for the night. You never have to worry about them," Jensen says with a sarcastic little smirk. "Misha's the most resourceful of all of us. He pulled a disappearing act a while ago. I'm gonna give Aldis a ride back to his place. All my boys are squared away, except you."

"Are you sure?"

"Well, I'm not gonna let you sleep on the boat tonight, that's for sure." He stares down the hill toward the water. "The way things are thrashing around down there, who knows where you'd be come morning. Might end up half the way down to Mexicali, and then I'd just be jealous."

 

 

"Good thing you pilot the boat better than you drive that truck," Jared says. He has to pry his hand free of the death grip he's had on the door handle for the last hour as Jensen drove them there, only once getting out of first gear. He checks to make sure the thing still has all four wheels after skidding sideways for most of the way.

Jensen's trailer stands dark at the end of a short path. It's an old airstream with woods on three sides of it, dull metal on the outside, rounded corners everywhere. The kinda place a person would have if they didn't want to put down roots, didn't want to stay in one place too long, and as Jared slips and slides toward it, he's thinking about bears and those big as fuck moose they're supposed to have around here.

"Took me six months to convince Alaska Power to put me on the grid this far out. Still not sure it was worth it," Jensen says, waving Jared in front of him. "The electricity cuts out every time a bird flies too low over this place."

"Am I allowed to wear my hat inside?" Jared asks, and Jensen rolls his eyes, pushes him toward the door and they both end up sliding some, grappling at each other to keep their feet beneath them.

There's no lock on the door, hardly enough of a latch to keep the thing closed.

"Everything I have that's worth stealing is on the boat," Jensen explains. He waves to different areas of the trailer. "Anyway, bedroom, kitchen, bathroom. What's mine is yours."

The inside of the place is as bare and dated as the outside, looks like the set of some cheeseball seventies sit-com, with ancient, avocado green appliances and orange plaid on the sofa, a stale smell in the air. Not much populating the couple of shelves here and there. No family pictures or little league trophies. Everything serves a very specific purpose. It's like a dry land version of his boat.

The trailer seems even smaller with the two of them in it, but after living together in the tight quarters of the ship, they've learned how to navigate through small spaces, stay out of each other's way, or not mind it when they do end up in each other's way, and it's nothing for Jensen to slide in behind him while they open up a bunch of cans for supper, hunker close together on the sofa and try to get any picture at all on Jensen's ancient, rabbit-eared television.

Jared had forgotten about Stella's warning from before, and hisses when he peels his hat off and tries to push his hair back from his forehead, strands of it stuck in the dried blood from his cut.

"Meant to do something about that earlier," Jensen says, gets up to dig around under the sink, comes up an old army ammo box. He lays out first aid gear on the counter, and calls Jared over to balance on what little room is left on the counter beside the sink.

"You know what you're doing, skipper?" Jared says.

“Trust me, I'm a fisherman. This won't hurt a bit." Jensen positions himself between Jared's spread knees, keeps talking to distract him from the cold sting of the antiseptic. "The injury rate is one hundred percent. Every single deckhand always comes back with a new scar or two or three. You’re gonna get hurt and it’s only a matter of waiting to see how badly.”

"And if I _listen_ to you, this will be as bad as it gets, right?" Jared says, handing a few of Jensen's words from earlier back to him.

Jensen takes Jared's chin between his fingers, turns his face to catch the light, presses a bit harder at the cut, wincing like it hurts him too when blood starts trickling out of it again. "Yeah, about that. I was pissed at myself and it came out on you."

"Not your fault I was a dumbass," Jared points out. His tongue feels huge in his mouth and his throat very dry, and Jensen's breath tastes like beer where it falls on Jared's lips.

"It's my job to keep you safe. A-number-one. To try and stop a dangerous situation from getting worse."

"But the other guys have their shit together. Don't need that kinda babysitting," Jared points out.

Jensen laughs then, bright and loud, sways some into it and his waist brushes up against the inside of Jared's thighs. There are about a dozen unintended consequences to that. "It only looks that way from the outside, trust me." He squeezes some ointment out onto the cut, slaps a bandaid on top of it and warns Jared not to get it wet, and Jared keenly feels the absence of him when he steps out of his orbit.

There's no cell reception this far out, so Jensen hops on the radio, gets news of the storm from other captains out there doing the same, makes sure that there aren't any desperate bastards out there still trying to pull up pots in the middle of this mess.

"We probably won't get an all clear until late tomorrow or the next day. Looks like you're stuck with me for a while yet," Jensen says.

"I think it's more the other way around. You're the one who's stuck with _me,_ " Jared points out.

"Don't say shit like that," Jensen says quietly. The smile he directs at Jared is broad, and something in Jared's chest hitches a little. "Anyway, you take the bed." When Jared begins to put up a fight about it, he goes on, "I'm trying to be a gentleman. A good host. Just shut up and let me do it."

 

 

At some point in the middle of the night, the power had gone out, and the wind is still beating against the sides of the place, making it rock a little in a way that Jared now finds nearly comforting. Jensen hadn't been happy on the couch, probably couldn't stretch out, so he'd moved to the floor while Jared was sleeping and is now facing him, hands curled against his chest like a kid, feet sticking out from under the blanket. His face is smooth, no worry lines and his mouth is slightly open. There's something so bare about him, absolutely unguarded. The nerves and worry that seem to make up at least a third of his personality have been wiped clean.

Jensen is stubborn and strange. Quick to anger and sarcasm, has a whole life tucked under his belt that Jared knows next to nothing about. He doesn't put up with bullshit, is at turns closed off and brutally honest, and Jared could love him. It could be so easy. Maybe he already does. Maybe there's no maybe about it. The thought is not as scary as it should be. For the first time in Jared's very short life, it doesn't make him want to run.

He watches Jensen sleep, listening to the ice beat like a drumline against the metal roof, on the windows, reaches over to tug the blanket back down over Jensen's feet. Outside, twigs and small branches are breaking under the weight of the ice. One particular pop like a bone breaking makes Jared jump, whisper, "Hey, skip," quiet enough that it won't wake Jensen unless he's already most of the way there.

"Fuck," Jensen says before he even opens his eyes. " _Fuck_." He looks over at Jared, grins like he's surprised to still find him there, and says, "Good morning," then creakingly gets to his feet and knuckles at the small of his back.

"So do you think that this tin can would hold up to, say, a tree falling on it?" Jared asks.

Jensen pulls a bottle down from the top of the fridge, Johnnie Walker black, and takes a slug, swishes it around his mouth and spits it out in the sink, and Jared has respect for the kinda guy who uses expensive hooch as mouthwash.

"Hell if I know." Jensen shrugs, then swallows the next mouthful. "But I don't particularly wanna be sober if we happen to find out." He passes the bottle to Jared. "Take it slow. How's the head?"

Prodding at the small lump on his forehead, Jared says, "Eh. Probably not fatal."

"You didn't puke last night or anything, did you? Both your pupils still the same size?" Jensen thumbs at Jared's lower eyelids, looks around and mutters something about where he left his flashlight.

"No concussion, skip," Jared says and knocks Jensen's hands away. Not because he wants to, though.

"What day is it? Shit, I shoulda asked you all this last night."

Jared thinks on it, hard. Tries to count backward and comes up with nothing. "Um. Thursday," he answers, his tone reaching upward like a question.

"Saturday," Jensen deadpans, "but it's not like you knew that before you scrambled yourself, so whatever." The fingers that squeeze the back of Jared's neck are icy. "C'mon. I'll show you how to work the generator. We should have enough gas to make it through."

 

 

The day passes slowly, claustrophobically. The generator drones on and on, and it gives them enough juice to keep the radio and the heater running, probably a light or two once the sun goes down.

"Jesus Christ," Jensen spits, when news comes in about some rich guy in a yacht stuck out there on the water. "So now a crew of Coast Guard boys need to go out there and yank this sorry son of a bitch out, all because he wanted to spend a week out there whale watching or some shit and didn't bother check the weather. It seems like every time something like this happens…" he stops himself short, cuts off the radio and takes another shot, has to be up to a dozen and a half at this point.

"Have you been through a lot of storms like this?" Jared asks, scooting over a little as Jensen joins him on the sofa.

Jensen picks up a deck of cards, starts shuffling them but doesn't offer Jared a game. They're something to do with his hands, cutting and recutting, thumbs flicking out aces then tucking them back in, only to pick them out again.

"Quite a few," Jensen says. "Worst one I ever saw was about fifteen years ago. I was hauling pots for this guy. Grunt work."

"Like me," Jared says, and hooks his heel on the couch, rests his chin on his knee.

"Not as smart as you," Jensen says quickly, then adds, "not as smart mouthed, either. Anyway, he was a real piece of work. Thought we could work through it. Try and dodge the mother. It didn't go too well."

"What happened?" A small part of Jared wants to know the answer, and a real big part of him doesn't.

Something dark crosses over Jensen's expression, like a cloud that blocks out the sun for a short while then moves along. "We're not gonna talk about that. It's bad luck. Nothing but." He pulls the jack of spades out of the deck, shakes his head and slips it back in, tries again and scores the ace of diamonds.

"How do you do that?"

Jensen shuffles the cards again, holds them out for Jared to draw from the top, all four aces in a row and Jensen flips the deck to show him the joker at the bottom. "If I told you all of my secrets at once, we wouldn't have anything left to talk about."

 

 

The wind has changed direction and the howl of it sounds different now, more branches popping with the shift. They've abandoned the bottle, and Jensen's told him about every storm he's made it through that he cares to recount, about how he once outran a tornado--in Kansas of all places--and how the best storms he's ever seen are in Texas. Jensen still calls it back home, although it's been almost two decades since he's lived there, longer than Jared's whole span on this planet. He talks about jobs he's worked, people he's worked for, and Jared's beginning to realize that he could probably listen to him forever and never get bored.

Jensen's all thoughtless touches, a lazy hand on the back of Jared's neck as he walks past him, nudges along his ribs when Jared says something funny. His glassy eyes fix on Jared for increasingly long stretches at a time and Jared stares back at him, only remembering to blink when his vision blurs and his eyes start to sting.

It's easy, slow. Nothing rushed or forced, rambling from one thing to another, as they talk through the sunset and into the dark. Jared's missed things like this, hasn't often had the close comfort of another human being, sitting in a room together until the sun goes down without ever thinking to turn the lights on.

"I should feed you something," Jensen says, and lets his head tip against the back of the sofa.

The night is wearing thin. Jared's had plenty of whiskey, and his tongue is loose enough to almost allow him to say the first thing that flings itself into his head. Almost, but not quite. "That would require getting up, and anyhow, dunno if the slosh in my stomach can really handle anything solid right now."

"I thought you said it was made outta iron," Jensen reminds him, and Jared's breath catches. Jensen remembers. Sure, it's a little thing, the tiniest fucking thing, but Jensen remembers it. He's been _paying attention._

Jensen's a little tanked himself, lets his hand fall on Jared's thigh and keeps it there. He's melted all along Jared's side, from shoulder to hip to ankle, and Jared can feel it every time he takes a deep breath, doesn't realize he's syncing his own up to it until it's already done.

"It has been so far, but I don't wanna particularly test that hypothesis all over your house," Jared says.

It earns him a crooked, sloppy grin from Jensen. "Alright, 'cause staying on this couch right now is the best idea anyone anywhere has had in a month." He slurs a few words together, says something about this being nice, but Jared can't be too sure. "If Texas had always felt this good, I might never have left it."

"Me either," Jared says, and it's probably the most truthful thing that's ever passed across his vocal chords.

Jensen's hand is still on his leg, he's staring at Jared and blinking slowly, tongue sneaking out to touch his bottom lip, and Jared thinks about how good he would taste right now. A clean sort of whiskey sweet. He thinks about whether or not Jensen's three-day old beard would prickle on his lips, what it would be like to know the scratch of it on his skin. Jensen quietly sighs, and Jared feels that too, gradually leans over, slower than slow, and slides his palm up the side of Jensen's face. His hand is shaking some and it's better than anything, the way Jensen's stubble catches on Jared's newly formed calluses, the curve of Jensen's cheek against Jared's palm when he smiles.

"Jared," Jensen says, breathy, lazy southern inflection through and through. "Naw, brother."

Jared jumps back like he's touched a live wire. "Fuck. _Fuck._ " The drunk drains out of him in a heartbeat and is replaced by a hollow, scooped out sensation in his chest. "I'm so sorry. I thought..." He can't finish the sentence, because he's not sure what he thought. What he's _been_ thinking. Jared's about as far as he can get away from Jensen and still remain on the sofa, and Jensen still hasn't moved to distance himself. He's actually reaching for him instead, hooking his fingers around Jared's ankle, trying to get him to stay.

"Don't be. It's....just. It's not like that."

Talking down to his hands, trying to get them to stop shaking, trying to ease what feels like buckshot in his stomach, Jared says, "You can drop me off at the docks tomorrow, if that's okay. If you don't mind. I'll figure it out from there."

"No. It's not okay. I'll drop you off at the docks, but then you're climbing onto my boat. You got that?" Jensen says, and it's the strangest thing, because Jensen is still touching him, staring at Jared like he has every right to do so.

"Sure, skip," Jared says, still mumbling. The room is starting to spin and he thinks he might throw up, and it's got nothing to do with the booze. "It's gonna be so fucking weird now, isn't it?"

Jensen shakes his head. "It doesn't have to be, and it's not gonna be. At least not from my end. The rest of it's up to you."

 

 

"You are _green_ , kid." Steve seems delighted because of Jared's hangover, grabbing him in a headlock, setting his knuckles into Jared's hair while Jared stomps on his toes and tries to get away. He's talking louder than he ever has as far as Jared can tell. Come to think of it, the sky is brighter and the birds are singing more shrilly than Jared's ever known them to, and whatever Misha's cooking below smells like death warmed over.

Jensen's still beautiful, though. That much hasn't changed.

"Alright, that's enough," Jensen tells them. "Start getting your shit together. We set off soon."

It's enough time for Jared to take a shower, the first one he's had in a couple of days, since the generator at Jensen's house didn't pull enough horsepower to run the fridge, much less heat some water, and he's comes out of the stall finger-brushing his hair to find Jensen standing there in only his shorts, a towel slung over his shoulder.

Not much of a stretch to think Jensen's trying to prove a point, show Jared that nothing's changed between them. That Jensen's still comfortable enough with him to parade around with his shoulders looking the way they do, his shorts low slung, freckles all over his chest and covering those fucking perfect upper arms of his.

"Misha's putting together a hangover remedy in the kitchen," Jensen says, turning the water on and testing the temperature. "It looks like roadkill and it's gonna taste like shit, but it works. I think everyone needs it this morning, short of Aldis, of course."

"Gotcha. Thanks, skipper," Jared says, pulling his shirt over his head, starting the process of layering up for the day.

Jensen's thumbs are hooked in the waistband of his boxers, and he throws a glance over his shoulder to say, "We're good, right?"

"Of course we are," Jared tells him, smiles big and hopes it looks real. "Never better."

 

 

Something crashes against the window of the wheelhouse and Jared turns to it, expects to see spiderwebbed glass, maybe a seagull that's run into an unfortunate blockade, but there's nothing flapping around on the deck, not a thing that's out of place. The door to the wheelhouse opens up a fraction, and Jared hears the sound of raised voices, can't make out what's being said before it's slammed shut again. He creeps closer, thinks he can pick out Chris talking in a muffled simmer, knows he hears Jensen reply to him, louder than he usually is.

There's no doubt that Jensen gets mad, has a whiplash temper with a shoddy brake system, but Jared's never heard him get loud before.

The door opens again, and yeah, it's definitely Chris, partially on the landing, red-faced and wound up tighter than a coil. "Listen, man. Do what you want, but don't forget I'm just as responsible for him as you are. For _all_ of them." With that, he slams the door closed, takes the steps down two at a time, and hardly spares a glance at Jared as he storms past. "Don't you have something you oughta be doing?" he says to Jared, and is gone before Jared can wrap his mouth around an answer.

Jared heads into command central, approaches it skittishly, ready to duck if something gets hurled in his direction.

"Things okay?" he asks, feeling awkward, like he's taking up too much space. Wishing--not for the first time--that he'd never had that growth spurt in tenth graded that had left him more times than not, half a foot taller than the next tallest guy in the room.

Jensen spins on him, ready to launch some more acid in his direction, gaze stuck in the area just below Jared's shoulder, about where Chris's eyes would be. Immediately, his stare ticks upward. "Fuck," Jensen says on an exhale. He runs his hands through his hair, takes the crumpled cigarette pack from his pocket, stares at it for a beat and then shoves it in his pocket again. "Sorry."

"No. God. There's nothing to be sorry about," Jared says, talking fast. "Anyway, I should really learn to knock. I never have broken myself of the habit of busting through doorways all the time."

Something about the shadow of the beard on Jensen's jaw and the particular way the light falls on his skin, sinks into the color of his eyes, makes him seem darker than usual. Pent up. With an effort that's visible, Jensen brings himself back under control. "Are you busy? Could you do me a favor?" Jensen raises his eyebrows, bites down on his lip in a way that makes Jared want to do it for him.

The pots are ready to go, the spares moored down to the deck. Right now, if Jensen asked Jared to drop and give him twenty, he'd give the guy fifty. Actually, Jared can't think of a fucking thing he wouldn't drop and do for Jensen right about now.

"Could you run back down to the galley for me? We're about to shove off and…." Jensen sighs heavy, rubs the back of his neck as if he's suddenly shy, then goes on in a real big rush, "...and I need to have a box of animal crackers."

"Crackers." Jared repeats, and Jensen interprets it as a question.

"Yeah. Y'know, like the ones that come in those little boxes. You can buy around fifty of them for a buck," Jensen clarifies, ducking his head like he's embarrassed.

With a shrug, Jared retreats into the guts of the boat. He passes Jensen's request over to Misha, who pauses, mouth open.

"Goddamn," Misha says, then as if he feels Jared didn't really get his intent the first time around, he repeats, " _Goddamn._ "

"Yeah?" Jared says, picking at the frankly monumental pile of bacon he's working on for lunch.

"He usually only has one a season, so…"

"So you don't have any," Jared finishes for him.

"I'll go tell him," Misha says, and squares his shoulders like he's about to face the gallows. Or worse.

"I'll do it," Jared tells him, "I've landed on his good side recently. He might take it better, coming from me."

He's sure to take his hat off before politely rapping on the door to the wheelhouse.

"Don't tell me," Jensen says, and one quick glance married to the tone of his voice tells Jared that his bulletproof vest is back in place. The crack in the wall Jensen's built around himself has been filled in, smoothed over like it was never there in the first place.

"We only got one and you--"

"I know. I know." Jensen waves him away. "Second shove-off. No fucking cheap ass crackers. We're number eight in line. _Eighth_ of all damn things. It's gonna be our funeral, man."

"At least it's not Friday, right?" Jared paints a hopeful expression on his face. Doesn't think it does the trick.

"That's. That's just great. So now you know what day it is."

 

 

The pots are in for a twelve-hour soak and the ship is asleep when Jared is startled awake by a dream. Quiet snores from Aldis in the bunk below him, more of the same out of Steve in the one across. Misha always sleeps on his back, arms crossed over his chest like some sorta Bela Lugosi knock off. Jared drops from his bunk, slips into his boots as silently as he can, throws on his coat and slips out into the passageway.

The dream had been odd thing where he'd been trapped in a room with a bunch of strangers who didn't have eyes, only smooth skin where they should have been, and everybody kept on touching his face, pale fingers like albino spiders crawling all over him. The dream is sticking around, not fading like most of his others do, and Jared wanders toward the kitchen, wondering if they have any hot chocolate left, if Jensen has anything stronger stashed somewhere to put in it.

Jensen's sprawled in the booth, the brim of his baseball hat pulled down so low it's almost touching his nose. He has a cigarette sitting on the table, and it's rolling back and forth with the rock of the boat. Whenever it gets too close to the edge of the table, he pushes it back into the center, watches it go back and forth all over again.

"Hey," he says, without looking up. "You should be asleep."

"So should you." Jared finds a book of matches, holds it up to Jensen, and Jensen shakes his head.

"Still haven't earned it yet," Jensen says. He takes his hat off, smoothes his hair back and puts it on again, backward this time. "Word came down from Fish and Game this afternoon. We're looking at a handful of days. Maybe a week tops, before they call the fleet back to shore."

Jared nods, digests that information. "Numbers are looking good though, right?"

"Might have been better if we headed up further north again, but yeah. Not too shabby." He rolls the cigarette back to the center of the table again, lays his hands flat on either side of it to act as bumpers. "That's not what I'm worried about."

"What's there to worry about?" Jared asks. The first few days after the storm had been rough, tossed them around enough that every single one of them except Jensen had spent a decent amount of time emptying their stomachs over the side of the ship. The seabed had been churned up, and the catch filthy because of it. Covered in silt and they'd had to hose it off before putting it into storage. Since then, the seas have calmed, they've fallen back into a groove, and Chris and Jensen aren't shooting each other death glares anymore. Things have evened out.

"You know I'm neurotic, yeah?" Jared tries to deny it, tell Jensen he wouldn't go that far, but Jensen just talks over him. "I could give you a list of stuff to worry about, but writing it all down would be bad luck."

"Of course it would be."

Jensen face lights up with a rueful grin, laugh lines coming out to play. It makes him softer somehow, and Jared wants to cover Jensen's hand with his own, tell him everything is gonna be fine. He won't do it, but he wants to.

"Anyway, maybe Chris was right after all. I gotta get my head on straight," Jensen says, and then rubs at his eyes, pops his jaw on a yawn. "I just can't shake the feeling that something's about to break loose."

 

 

Jared's teeth are clanking together and he doesn't know why. Can't make it stop. His hands are wracked with tremors and his bones are about to rattle straight out of his skin. Arms like cinderblocks are tied to his wrists and his legs aren't much better off. His vision is blurred, hair in his eyes and he's so fucking sleepy, wants to curl up right here and now and hibernate for at least a year.

Voices are cutting through the clack of his teeth. They're talking fast. Loud. Fire ants are crawling all over his skin and that doesn't make any sense. He's not supposed to be in Texas. He's supposed to be in Alaska, went through a lot of goddamn effort to get to Alaska, to a place that doesn't have fire ants and now someone's gone and taken him back to Texas and dropped him in a hive full of them.

The voices are getting louder. Closer. Jared's stomach is knotted up. Every muscle is knotted up and screaming and everyone needs to shut up and let him sleep. Give him an hour. He'll be right as rain. Jared tries to tell them as much and his tongue doesn't work. The words won't make it past his teeth, which are still chattering, by the way. His mouth tastes like salt and he thinks he's bitten his tongue.

There's pressure on his face, his eyelids, then someone is peeling one of them back and Jared sees the sun. It makes about as much sense as the fire ants because this is supposed to be Alaska in the almost-winter, nothing but steel grey skies and anyway, when he's been able to sleep, it's been mostly during the day.

"Jared. Hey. _Jared_."

And that's a voice he knows, swimming up out of the jumble. A voice that has followed him down into his dreams and back up again, low whiskey rasp that he can't get out of his head. A particular way of saying his name that Jared likes best.

Someone's working open his jacket, tugging at his shirt and he starts to feel better with every inch of skin exposed, and damn if that isn't backward as hell. A towel is rubbing at his hair and there's that voice again, mumbling softly in his ear, asking if he's okay. Telling him he's gonna be okay. Warm hands prodding along his ribs and his stomach, shifting up to his neck, callused thumbs under his jaw, urging him to tilt his head upward.

"He's coming to." There's urgency in the voice, _Jensen's_ voice, followed by the crackle of a short-wave. The fire ants are slowly going along their merry way. "Give him some fucking space," Jensen barks then proceeds to do the exact opposite. He kneels beside Jared, forehead on Jared's thigh while he unties his boots, tosses them one by one over his shoulder, then crawls into the booth beside him and pulls him close. He might have tried to yank Jared into his lap if he could. Someone hands him a pile of blankets and more towels and Jensen gathers them all around both of them.

Jared remembers the deck dropping down from under his feet like an elevator that suddenly broke loose. Heavy metal music cutting out and Jensen's voice blasting through the bullhorn. A half dozen pots toppling and one of the holding tanks running over from the lean of the boat, crabs scuttling all over the deck like something you'd see during a midnight b-movie marathon. Steve's grasp slipping down his arm. Everybody yelling. Water so cold it actually felt hot.

An hour. He just needs to sleep. He can't keep his eyes open, can't figure out why he should even be trying.

"Someone do something about his shoulder," Jensen growls, and that doesn't make any sense either. Jared's shoulder is fine. His ankle and his hip are jacked up now that the numbness is pushing back, and he tries to tell Jensen as much, but all he can manage is a weak croak.

Someone cuts off a short shout of pain. Jared thinks it sounds like Chris. Can't be sure.

"You're okay, babe. You're good. You're not going anywhere." Jensen's whisper in his ear. His breath so warm on Jared's skin it feels like it's boiling. Jensen just called him babe and none of this is making any sense.

Jared's vision swims into pinpoint focus, still fuzzy around the edges. The scar on Jensen's chin. His crooked, many times broken first and second fingers wrapped around Jared's arm. Aldis pacing the galley a few feet away. Chris, pale as hell, like he's about to pass out. The mug of hot chocolate Misha sets in front of him. He's still shaking too badly to even think about picking it up.

"C'mon. Let's get you into bed. Warm you up," Jensen says, and then he's being bodily lifted, Jensen on one side and Aldis on the other, feet hardly on the floor and that's good. There's no way his legs would hold him up right now.

 

The light is warm. Artificial. A blanket is pulled up to Jared's chin. A t-shirt that doesn't belong to him twisted around his middle. He's in a bed, and on the wall beside it is an old polaroid photograph, yellowed and sun-faded, held there with a piece of black electrical tape. In it, a woman is holding a boy in her lap. There's a quirk in the bridge of her nose and something about her smile reminds Jared of Jensen.

The mattress shifts beside him, dips down, and a mug of something drops into his field of vision. Jared makes a noise and it goes away. The pressure on the mattress disappears and Jared tries to sit up, head swimming and mouth full of cotton.

"I went over," he says.

"We'll talk about that later." Jensen has a chair pulled up to the side of the bed. His elbows are propped on his knees and he's resting his chin on this folded hands, settled into it as if he plans on doing this exact thing for as long as it takes.

He's the very best thing Jared's ever seen.

"I can't really remember what happened." There are snapshots in Jared's head, memories that might as well belong to someone else, big blank spaces in between them. He can recall the panicked desperation in Jensen's voice afterward. That part is bell clear.

"Later," Jensen says again.

"You don't have to stay. I'm okay."

Jensen reaches over, brushes Jared's hair back from his forehead. "I'm not going anywhere. Gotta make sure you stay breathing." There's a joke in his tone, but his bloodshot eyes are a little watery, and his smile is small. A frail thing. "I have to keep looking at you, or you might stop."

Jared rolls over on his side to face Jensen. "I can't even be trusted to do that much on my own."

 

Some of the fog has blown out of Jared's head. The porthole in Jensen's cabin is dark when Jared swings his feet to the floor, adjusts to being upright again. He's lost at least ten hours. Still can't figure out which day it is.

"A wave hit on starboard. Forty-five degree angle to the bow." The way Jensen's talking is choppy, downright robotic. "You were ten feet away from the bulkhead. I had my eyes on you." Jensen rubs his mouth, says behind his hand, "I always do."

"I know, skip," Jared whispers.

"Stuff went scattering. A pot smashed into you, sent you flying."

Jared remembers it vaguely. Something smacking into him. It had felt like getting hit by a Volkswagen.

"A pot was up on the table, about to go in. You tripped into the buoy and the rope got wrapped around your ankle."

"Holy shit," Jared says. The full impact of what almost happened hits him, and that feels like a Volkswagen too.

"Yeah. You hit the water with six hundred pounds tied to your ankle. I've never seen anyone move as fast as Chris moved. Still don't know what he did to cut the thing free, but he just about yanked his arm right off doing it." Jensen clears his throat, goes on, "Three more days, then we're wrapping up." He stands, stretches and Jared realizes he's probably been sitting in one spot for hours. "I'll go get you something to eat."

 

 

Jared's in the staging area, stretching out his boots. He'd finally gotten them broken in, and now they're fitting tightly again after getting soaked.

There's a footfall behind him, and Jared hardly has time to turn before Jensen's fetched him up in his arms, pushing backward through the doorway, ass up against the thumping dryer. Warm, humid air and the smell of fabric softener beating out the baseline sweaty boy-smell and stale cigarette smoke that's pervasive on the ship.

"You scared the hell out of me," Jensen says, sounding like he's angry about it, but his hands are scuffing up along the sides of Jared's neck, digging into his hair. Jensen has a leg shoved between Jared's, their chests plastered together. Jared can feel the fall of Jensen's breath on his mouth, the press of his hips and he's never felt anything this intimate in his life. Desperation like a living thing in the air around them, the small room charged with it.

"If I'd been going a couple knots faster. If Chris hadn't been so quick on his feet. If--"

Jared cuts him off. "But you weren't. And he was."

"You were dead weight when I hauled you out of the water," Jensen says.

"It--it was you?" Jared stutters. He had no idea.

"It was. And you were so fucking _cold_. Like a body." Jensen pushes Jared's shirts up, gathers them under his arms and spreads his fingers on Jared's ribs.

"It's okay," Jared says. He could be assuring Jensen, or himself, or trying to get his jackrabbit of a heart to slow down. Anyone's guess, because Jensen is stooping down, pressing his mouth to Jared's stomach, and the short hair at the base of his skull feels soft like silk beneath Jared's palm, and Jared is dismantled completely by the slight scrape of Jensen's teeth on his lower stomach, the hot slickness of his tongue heading lower.

"Goddamn, Jared," Jensen says, and drops to his knees, holds Jared's gaze as his busted up fingers get Jared's belt unhooked, his top buttons free. He nuzzles at Jared's crotch, breathes in deep like he's trying to learn the smell of him. Jared's never felt so young in his life, so out of his depth, scrabbling at anything that might help hold him up while Jensen gets his hand on his cock, jacks him a couple of times to really get him there.

Jensen flattens his tongue against the slit, smudges Jared's cock along his lips and wets them with precome. His eyes are closed, lashes fluttering against the hollows beneath them, a flush spreading across his cheeks and coloring the tips of his ears the sweetest bright pink. His features relax and the constant worry lines between his eyebrows disappear. Jensen takes the tip of Jared's cock in, hums at the taste of it and it sounds like relief.

Jensen has a pornstar mouth, except without all the unfortunate brain-dredging dialogue. Slick and snug, and the heart-thumping hint of teeth only makes it better when he takes Jared in further, starts to work his mouth up and down his cock. Jared thinks about sense memory, how the smell of cheap dryer sheets will forever be related to the sensation of Jensen's lips wrapped snug around his cock, his tongue curling under it, the steady, sure way he grips him at the base.

This isn't the first time Jensen's sucked someone off. There's nothing shy about the seal his mouth makes around Jared's cock, the spit that's filthy on his chin, the sloppy choking sound he lets loose as Jared gets with the program and begins to hitch his hips in small thrusts. Not a hint of hesitation as Jensen takes him in as far as he can, gags and swallows around him, fingers digging into Jared's ass.

Jared's weak-kneed, floating a little, pulse like a thunderclap in his ears, so fucking lost in Jensen's mouth, the back of his throat, those dirty, beautiful noises he keeps making.

"Jensen," he says, voice broken and staggered, and realizes that it's the first time he's said his name out loud.

Jensen misses a beat, finally, _finally_ opens his eyes to stare directly into Jared's, mouth still stretched so gorgeous around Jared's cock, and it sends a shock through Jared's body, makes him come before he can even utter a warning, shoot hot and long into Jensen's mouth, down his throat, and Jensen takes it all, doesn't look away. Not once. Not as Jared collapses in front of him, hits the ground hard and tries to catch his breath.

"I thought you said it wasn't like that," Jared says, still panting some. He knows he's imprinted, sex-drunk and hazy, and can't force himself to his feet quite yet, pretzeled up with his dick hanging out, going soft and still sticky with Jensen's spit. Jared edges in to kiss him but Jensen turns his face away, and that simple action delivers a neat, sharp stab of something Jared can't quite call regret.

Jensen rests back on his haunches, out of Jared's reach, wipes at his mouth with the back of his hand. Spits on the floor before standing up and taking a step away. "Yeah, it's not," he says, and Jared can't help thinking that the flush in his cheeks and the liquid quality of his eyes and the way he's refusing to look directly at him makes him a liar.

 

 

The last of the pots have been hauled in, the final string of the season finished up while Jensen had been blasting Minor Threat over the bullhorn, his voice breaking through to warn them about every coil of rope or chain sitting on the deck. It's his new fixation, one that every soul on the ship understands. The catch has been culled and the hatches on the holding tanks locked down for the trip back to Dutch, and Jared's finishing the back breaking job of securing all the pots in the aft, lining them up and putting them to rest for the season.

Five hours ago. Five hours ago Jensen had sucked him off and wouldn't kiss him after. He's gone from knowing what it's like to be held close by someone in a way that's not only physical, to trying to figure out which one of them is supposed to be the consolation prize.

Chris joins him, an extra set of hands that makes pushing the final few pots into place and cinching them down that much easier. They finish, Chris offers him a cigarette and Jared actually considers it for a flash, but then waves it off.

"I was wrong about you," Chris admits, "thought you wouldn't last a week when I first saw you. Had no idea what Misha had been thinking."

"I never know what Misha's thinking," Jared says, and it earns him a smile so rare that it's on the endangered list.

"None of us do. None of us really want to. Anyhow," Chris sticks his hand out and Jared shakes it. "You're as tough as the rest of us. Maybe more so. Dunno what kinda trouble you're planning on getting into after this, but I'll vouch for you. Everybody on this boat will, and if I don't see your sorry hide onboard next season, you better believe I'll track you down and bring you home myself."

Jared ducks his head, tries to swallow, doesn't trust his voice to push through the ache in his throat. Thinks about what Jensen said about the family you're born with, and the other one that sometimes matters more.

Chris takes a last drag on his cigarette, flicks it over the side, grips Jared by the shoulder and gives him a small shake. "Listen. Jensen's an asshole. We all know that. But he's not _that_ kinda asshole. You hear me?"

"Yeah. I get it."

 

 

"I'm heading down to the Gulf after this. About time I thawed out some." Jensen leans his forearms on the rail, shifts his hips and even that small move is enough to snatch Jared's breath away.

Jared's well acquainted with how Jensen's mouth feels, the touch of his hands on his bare skin and has no clue what to do with that sorta knowledge. Everything about this screams the morning after when they never really had a night before, and the worst part about it all is that Jared's not even pissed. It's self-destructive and pathetic, but he's still glad it happened.

"You have another boat down there?" Jared asks.

"More like a timeshare right now, but I'm getting there. Pretty skimpy crew. Chris is meeting me down there." Jensen stretches against the rail, long and cat-like, and fuck it, he has to know how that makes him look. "Gonna need a couple more hands on deck."

Jared nods, takes it for the offer it probably is.

"Nothing beats this," Jensen says. He squints toward the horizon, the dawn only now beginning to color the sky in vibrant slashes. "Best view in the world."

Jared stares out, tries to puzzle out what Jensen sees. A gray sea and choppy waves, the distant line where the sky runs into the water. The place where they meet is hazy, indistinct. Getting brighter by the second. "There's not a single sign of life out there. It's...lonely."

"That's not what I see. I see nothing blocking us from going where we wanna go. Nobody we have to answer to or hide from. It's not loneliness. It's free." Jensen shoulders into him, covers Jared's hand with his own on the rail, lines up their fingers and stays like that.

For the first time in weeks, the sun is breaking through the cloud cover, showering the water with sparks. Jared closes his eyes, the darkness taken over by scattered afterimages.

"You should have kissed me." Jared says it because it's the last chance he might have to come clean, let Jensen know exactly what he wants. Hold his heart out in his grimy, fingernail-bitten hand and see what Jensen might do with it.

Jensen slips his fingers between Jared's, curls them and squeezes. His palm is rough and his grip is very strong, and when he speaks, it's hardly a whisper. "I know."

Jared waits for him to say more. Let go of his hand and walk away. Do something, but he doesn't. "You still could. I'd let you."

Jensen takes a step closer, gaze flicking up to check the wheelhouse, over his shoulder, then he leans in, hesitates the tiniest amount before he presses his lips to Jared's mouth, warm and slow and heartbreakingly careful. He pulls back but doesn't go far, and his hands come up to frame Jared's face, thumbs notched along Jared's cheekbones. Jensen kisses him again, and Jared tips into it, kisses him back this time, tastes the lingering coffee on Jensen's lips and the pervasive, constant salt from the air. Jensen's stubble prickles his skin the way he hoped it would, and his lips are so fucking soft, pliant and opening up the instant Jared flicks his tongue against them.

Jensen's mouth is hot and wet, more coffee on his tongue as Jared slides his against it, uses his newly developed muscles to yank Jensen in closer and keep him there, hand starfished at the small of Jensen's back. Jared's stomach swoops like he's tumbling blind and headlong into a very long fall and now Jensen's sucking on his tongue, scraping his teeth on Jared's bottom lip, angling just so to kiss him more deeply. He slides his hand into Jared's hair at the base of his skull, bunches it into a fist, tugs some and yeah, that's really good, speeds up Jared's blood, makes him hold on that much tighter.

Something nearby clangs onto the deck and they jump away. Jensen's lips are parted, shiny and kissed a little swollen and it's a good look on him. The best look Jared's seen so far.

"C'mon," Jensen says, and spins away, doesn't check to see if Jared follows. And of course Jared follows, he's always gonna dog Jensen's heels in ways both real and metaphorical, chases him below deck, down the short, blessedly empty passageway and into his cabin.

Pulse pounding fit to burst as Jensen thumbs the lock then pushes Jared up against the wall, peels off his outer layer, coat and sweatshirt hitting the floor, and kisses him again.

"Since day one," Jensen says, fragmented, and turns his attention to Jared's jaw, sweet sucking little kisses and nips to his skin, a nuzzle right below Jared's ear that makes him shiver and smile.

A true stab of regret buries itself in Jared's chest then, for all the time wasted, the weeks he could have had Jensen wrapped all around him like this. Another puzzle piece slots into place at the same time. Jensen's in the business of denying himself things that he wants or needs in ways that are both big and small. The ancient pack of cigarettes that even now Jared can feel pressing into his hip. His own safety when it comes to keeping others out of harm's way. More than two hours of sleep at night. A kiss. Loving a boy who would love him back with each and every last battered piece of his heart.

Jensen's kissing his way down Jared's body, shoving at layers. Everything's half-way. Jared's t-shirt hanging off of his arm, his belt undone, the top button unhooked, like Jensen doesn't have the attention span to finish one thing before he moves to the next.

"The first time I laid eyes," Jensen mutters, and presses his mouth to the front of Jared's jeans, leaves a damp spot of spit behind.

"The first time you laid eyes, you gave me shit," Jared reminds him, and spreads his legs wider, hopes it'll be enough to keep his balance because he's so far gone right now. Spun out and fucked up and not trusting that any of this is real.

"Hey now," Jensen teases, "I also bought you boots and a raincoat." He grins up at Jared while he tries to unknot his laces and get the things off of him. "These fucking boots," Jensen goes on, then giggles. Actually _giggles_ , and it sounds young, so carefree. It steals years from him, makes him beautiful in a brand new way.

He pulls Jared's boots off, Cinderella in reverse, gets back to his feet and then it's Jared's turn to push Jensen's shirt off over his head, smear his mouth along Jensen's collar bone, his upper arm, back up to his neck again. So much warm skin everywhere. They shuffle step toward the narrow bed, Jared finishing the job of kicking his pants off, hitting his knees to unlace Jensen's boots. He bends to kiss Jensen's ankle and then his instep.

"Jared, my feet have been in those things for at least sixteen hours," Jensen warns, trying to pull away, still smiling.

"I've been covered in fish guts for weeks," Jared reminds him. "Whatever's going on with your feet isn't gonna make a blip on my radar."

"That's fucking _hot,_ " Jensen says, as Jared pulls his jeans down and off. "It shouldn't be, but fuck me, it is."

It's Jared's turn to laugh, crawling up to straddle Jensen's lap, smiling into a kiss. It turns into a soft moan when he grinds down on Jensen, feels the thick ridge of his cock through his boxers, the damp heat of it. Jensen pushes up into him, wraps his hands around Jared's middle, slides them up along his ribs, watching them as they go, as if Jared's not the only one getting off on the span of them on his body, the size of them, their roughness and scars.

"Jensen. I--" he cuts off, can't say what he wants outside of everything. Anything. He wants Jensen on top of him. Around him. All over. He wants Jensen's cock inside of him. He wants to smell like Jensen. He wants Jensen's sweat on his tongue, to feel the sting of it in his eyes.

"Yeah, me too." Jensen puts his strength to good use, hauls Jared around and nearly tosses him onto his back on the bed. He rids Jared of his boxers and takes care of his own, and fuck his cock is pretty. Thick and curved toward his belly, as pink as the flushed tips of his ears. He settles between Jared's legs, the full weight of him bearing down, sliding their cocks together with a slow roll of his hips. The fit of their bodies like perfection defined.

"Wanna do you better than this," Jensen says, still moving on top of Jared, their precome easing the slip of their cocks, hoisting Jared's leg so it wraps higher around his hip.

Jared winds his arms around Jensen's neck, cradles the back of his head. "What, like fancy champagne and those little chocolates on the pillow? C'mon, Jensen, I'm not that kinda girl." He sucks on Jensen's earlobe, drawing out a shiver that hits Jensen from head to toe.

"Fuck, kid. The things you do to me." He plants his face in Jared's neck, rolls a little to get a hand between them and skates his palm along Jared's cock. "I was thinking more like an actual bed. One that's big enough for both of us, so you don't end up with my elbow in your mouth or something. Maybe light a candle or two."

"Who's to say I don't _want_ your elbow in my mouth?" Jared laughs, then loses track because Jensen's cupping his balls, rubbing at the skin behind them, cutting off Jared's snickering as neat as can be.

"Middle drawer," Jensen says, and noses at the spot behind Jared's ear, breathes in deep like he's trying to memorize the smell of him.

Warmth spreads like a blast heater all over Jared's skin as he finds a tube of lube, heat centered in his chest, moving down to his cock. "Did you actually think…" Jared trails off, hands the tube over to Jensen.

"Not specifically. It's just--"

"Everything's redundant." Jared fills in the blank. He spreads his knees wider, light touches to Jensen's upper arm, his shoulder, up the side of his neck to press against his speeding pulse.

"Exactly." Jensen hesitates. "Have you? Is this your first?"

"In the way you're thinking of it, I have," Jared says. Jensen's eyebrows creep upward, and Jared continues, "Hey, I might have been a queer sixteen year old growing up in the middle of nowhere, but I was a _resourceful_ queer sixteen year old." A drop of sweat trickles down Jensen's temple, and Jared picks it up with his thumb, touches it to his tongue, and now another small piece of Jensen is inside of him. Jared goes on, "But in other ways, no. This is the first time it's mattered."

Jensen scrapes his teeth on his bottom lip, that soft, liquid thing happening to his eyes again. "It hasn't mattered to me for in a while either."

"Really?" The grin on Jared's face is big enough to hurt, his chest full of a thing he doesn't have a name for, and Jensen's still staring down at him like he's something precious. Something to be held onto.

"Yeah, really." Jensen kisses him again, tender and slow. Each cheek, the tip of his nose, his mouth, tongues him open and licks inside and there's his hand again, pulling at Jared's hair, catching on the tangles until Jared's moaning against his mouth, shifting his hips up and up to get closer to Jensen, feel more of him.

Jared pops open the cap to the lube, pours too much of it into Jensen's hand, says, "I can take two fingers right from the jump. You don't need to fool around."

"Fuck, Jared." Jensen's hips jump like he has no control over them, his cock leaving a wet trail on Jared's skin. "You can't just say shit like that."

Jared sorta shrugs, tries to look sheepish and falls far short of it, his breath catching as Jensen reaches down circles his rim, taps at it a couple times and finds out Jared's telling the truth. He works him open, kissing Jared to quiet his groans. More lube and a third finger, and that stings some, a hot burn in the best kinda way, and Jared has to grab his cock at the base, squeeze some because he's not gonna come. Not yet, although his body is screaming for it, louder and louder, hijacked by the deep-down thrum in his cock.

"So hot," Jensen says, catching on to how close Jared's gotten from his fingers and mouth alone. He shifts up, kneels between Jared's legs, drapes them over his own and runs his fist up and down himself a couple of times, wets it up with slick and precome. He tips forward, catches himself with one arm, rubs the tip of his cock on Jared's rim and slides in. Pushes past the resistance and goes still. His mouth goes lax and his eyes slip closed for a heartbeat and he makes a noise that almost sounds like pain, but the best kind of ache, all need and more need.

"C'mon. Please. _Please_." Jared sets his heels against the back of Jensen's thighs, urges him in deeper, wants as much of him as he can get, and he thinks Jensen might have just called him a brat but he can't be too sure. Their stomachs rub together, Jared's cock trapped between them, the tug and pull of it like candy. So is the sensation of Jensen sliding into him, drilling in further with each jump of his hips, making a space for himself inside of Jared's body.

Long, slamming thrusts punctuated by little stutters, and Jared swears he can feel the throb of his heart in the stretch of his rim around Jensen's cock, can feel Jensen's heartbeat with each shocky punch of his hips. He starts to come, clenches down around Jensen's cock, grapples at his shoulders and back, shivers so fully it seems like his bones are shaking their way out of his body.

Jensen fucks him through it, Jared's come a smeared mess on their stomachs, wet slaps of skin-on-skin as Jensen speeds up, slams in harder. He comes with his lips latched onto Jared's, his tongue in Jared's mouth, kissing him as they come down, until the sweat covering their bodies begins to dry and the small, mindless hitches of Jensen's hips slow down and stop.

He's still buried inside of Jared, going soft and sticky, brushing Jared's hair back from his eyes when there's a knock on the door.

"Hey, skip?" It's Steve's voice, muffled through industrial steel.

"Yeah?" Jensen answers. He rolls his eyes, snorts quietly, and still doesn't pull out. Jared works very hard not to laugh.

"Got word from the harbormaster," Steve tells him. "We have the all clear to sail into Dutch. They're ready for us."

"Gotcha. Making waves in five."

"Hey," Steve says, "have you seen the kid around?"

Jensen smiles, places a finger over Jared's lips, silently telling him to keep quiet. Jared bites it.

"Holy shit, Steve," Jensen says. "He's six and a half feet tall. Can't be that hard to find him."

 

 

The _Wayward_ is twenty minutes away from getting drydocked for a rehaul, a bunch of small repairs that Aldis can't accomplish while the boat's in the water. In an hour, Jared and Jensen are due to hop onto the air taxi that will take them to Juneau and a room that Jensen's booked. One that has a legitimate shower with decent water pressure, room service and a bed that's big enough to fit them both with space to spare.

Jensen's in the middle of his end-of-season ritual, double-checking to make sure everything is stowed and locked down, doesn't trust Jared to help him and has to see it all with his own eyes.

Jared's in the staging room, shoving his raincoat and boots into a duffel, making sure the lockers all have padlocks on them because apparently Jensen's wearing off on him. A soft rustle behind him tells him Jensen has joined him and he spins to find Jensen leaning against the doorway, his own backpack flung from his shoulder and a duffel hanging from his fingers.

"Are we good?" Jared asks.

"I think so. Almost," Jensen says.

"Did you check the stove? Remember to unplug the toaster?" Jared says, trying on his best June Cleaver impersonation and falling well short of the mark.

"Fucker. Now why would you go and do something like that?" Out of his pocket, Jensen pulls a black indelible marker, pushes a couple of raincoats out of the way and points to a spot on the wall. "If you draw a dick, I'm gonna have something to say about it," Jensen tells him.

Jared grins, kisses the corner of Jensen's mouth and wonders if there will ever be a time when Jensen doesn't look around first, check to make sure no one else is there to see them. That Jensen kisses him back right away is enough for now. Might be enough forever.

"Are you positive?" Jared asks.

"You earned it. You've left your mark," Jensen assures him.

He takes his time, sure to make his handwriting steady, printing _Fair winds and following seas_ in cautious, blocky letters, then signs his name underneath it. He doesn't put a year. He'll be back, after all.

 

 

_\--end_

 

 

 


End file.
